Dutch American designer Dirk van Erp was known for his mica-shaded lamps. While not a van Erp original, this piece with a hammered copper base recalls the well-known design.Bruce Edwards
/ Edmonton Journal

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David Locky greets me in a herringbone-patterned, button-up vest. It’s a gentleman’s vest perfectly suited to the backdrop of his 1924 Arts and Crafts bungalow. He has just finished salting the front walk at the centre of his huge 66-foot-wide lot (with typical city-centre lots being a mere 33 feet wide, this was a major selling feature that developers used to lure buyers to Edmonton’s Highlands district, the burbs during that era). The lot was first bought by Julia May Griffith, a 22-year-old woman with a taste for business. She built the 1,400-square-foot, one-and-a-half-storey home with some unique exterior features. It’s clad in West Coast-style cedar shingles. A clinker brick chimney and decorative, white rafter tails are exclamation points against dark blue paint and yellow trim. On its completion, she flipped the house immediately.

Bolted on the front of the home’s enclosed sleeping porch is a decorative plaque that reads: “1924 William Rose, Bookkeeper, Hayward Lumber.” Locky, a wetland ecologist and professor at MacEwan University, was the catalyst for the Highlands historic-plaques program. Any house in the community older than 50 years can boast a sign stating the home’s age and original inhabitants. “People have told me they will walk around the community to just look at the plaques,” Locky says. “It’s like you can see the ghosts in each house.”

He leads me through with the energy of a fiddle master (he’ll play a Robbie Burns tune if you ask). When it comes to information, Locky shares it like a virtuoso, a living, breathing Wikipedia page titled “The Rose Residence” (minus the highlighted links, which can, in fact, be found on his blog).

A resident of Edmonton since 1999, he and his wife Sarah bought the house in 2005, when he knew nothing about Arts and Crafts architecture. Since then, he’s steeped himself in stories that surround him. The stories of Ethyl and Ivy, two spinster sisters who owned the home after the Roses, intermingle with memories of his grandfather. Locky found him passed away at the desk he inherited, that now sits casually in Locky’s dining room. He weaves tales of his furniture with perspectives on the medieval guild system (which made way for the Arts and Crafts movement) and the names of all the home’s past owners. For a moment, he stops. We appreciate a Dirk Van Erp-style lamp. Its shade is rare mica; its light is like a sunset.

A wood mantel caps the prominent clinker brick fireplace (only 100 buildings are left in the city with this brick that once was discarded for its colourful and deformed surface). On top of the mantel are a dozen metal art pieces. Scavenging at garage sales, online and at antique shops, Locky has collected dozens of the artisanal period pieces. Many are stamped ‘Roycroft’ and ‘Stickley.’ I count more than 12 ashtrays on shelves throughout this non-smoking home. “I come from a long line of blacksmiths,” Locky says, explaining his collection. “I don’t know why I like it, but some of my fondest memories are of my grandfather pretending to put horse shoes on my hands.”

The collection is spread through the living and dining rooms, where dark fir trim, maple flooring and brass heating vents sustain the space’s historic feel. A Stickley chair and footstool occupy a prime spot next to the fireplace, while a bookcase from a convent and magazine holder from the Lakeside Craft Shops (founded in 1912 in Sheboygan, Wisconsin) add storage.

The dining room is cantilevered over an open side yard filled with sparrows and sun. Locky, his wife Sarah and daughter Rosemary eat their dinner at a Mission-style, quarter-sawn oak table from a convent in Winnipeg, lit by a period pewter chandelier from a Pennsylvanian doctor’s office.

“I get everything online now, mostly eBay,” says Locky, “It’s not that much to ship it if you love a piece. Besides, you will have it forever.”

To get upstairs, we walk through a small “courtyard,” a square, interior hallway with seven doors. There are entries to the living room, kitchen, bathroom, and to two main-floor bedrooms. One entry leads upstairs to the master bedroom that stretches the width of the house. Well-placed gable dormers open up the space: one dormer creates a reading nook, the other an alcove for the master bed.

As we descend the stairs, I admire a custom, Mission-style railing. The railing was built by Slavo Cech, a skilled Edmonton metal artist, who once lived next door. The Locky residence’s former owner was an electrician and rewired his neighbour’s home in exchange for the railing. Its understated beauty strikes me: Even in this home’s newest renovations, this is a house filled to bursting with art and craft.

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